Maintaining live rock

[Wayne P.]

Good evening everyone. I had a 75 gallon tank and had to move so I broke down the tank, gave the equipment and livestock away but kept my live rock. I let it dry out and then about 2 months ago I decided to revive my 13.5 Fluval EVO nano. I did not want to wait the 2 months to cure the rock so I went ahead and bought some new live rock. Cycled that nano and things are really going well in that tank. But I have about 30 lbs of live rock that I have currently residing in a 5 gallon Lowes bucket. I introduced a bottle of nitrifying bacteria, have a heater and power head to move the water. First few weeks there was a lot of nastiness floating on the top of the bucket, but now about two months later it appears that the bacteria have done their business and my rocks are cured. It's going to be months to a year or more until I get a larger tank set up. I don't really want to dry the rock out and start over again. So with that long winded explanation my question is, do I need to feed my live rock bacteria colonies and what? Or do I just keep the heater and power head moving the water? Thanks all.

 

[daelie]

You could dump a bit of food in there every so often to break down so your bacteria have something to eat. If there's nothing in the water at all, they will eventually die out without a food source of some sort.

 

[Wayne P.]

You could dump a bit of food in there every so often to break down so your bacteria have something to eat. If there's nothing in the water at all, they will eventually die out without a food source of some sort.

That's kind of what I was thinking. Maybe drop a cube of mysis in on a weekly basis.

 

[sharpimage]

For a year wait, just let it dry out. Leave it in the empty lowes bucket with the lid. Only takes a month or 2 to get it live again. If not a cube every 2 weeks or a pinch of pellets or flake. Probably some people food would suffice as well

 

[brandon429]

Feeding it loads it with phosphate, when bac are wet they're fed. You don't have to feed bac they get their own feed without us, the rock gets it's bac when you add water and gets all the feed it needs to keep bacteria when wet, for years, we have a three year test of this already on file in the microbiology of cycling thread. Specifically, if you keep it wet only w saltwater, at any interval now that bac has been added via bottle you can test it for ammonia oxidation and it passes, though ammonia might be produced extra for a while due to internally clearing out organics over time. Techs/ lab people who handle measure/study actual bacteria already know due to testing how they have accessed feed without us since dawn of time. The items that were once living inside and outside the rock were dried into jerky and now rehydrated, so they have lots of man made food already